🔗 Share this article

Scrubby trees hide the entryway. A descending timber passageway descends to a brightly lit reception area. Inside lies a surgery unit, outfitted with beds, cardiac monitors and breathing machines. Plus cabinets full of healthcare supplies, drugs and organized stacks of extra garments. In a staff room with a laundry appliance and kettle, doctors monitor a screen. The screen reveals the movements of enemy spy drones as they zigzag in the air above.

Medical staff at an subterranean medical center observe a screen displaying enemy suicide and surveillance UAVs in the area.

This is Ukraine’s secret below-ground hospital. The facility opened in the eighth month and is the second such installation, situated in the eastern part of the country close to the frontline and the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. “Our facility sits six meters under the ground. It’s the safest way of delivering care to our injured military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers protected,” said the facility's lead doctor, Maj the chief surgeon.

This medical station treats 30-40 casualties a day. Their conditions vary. Some have catastrophic leg injuries requiring surgical removal, or serious abdominal injuries. Some patients can walk. The vast majority are the casualties of enemy FPV drones, which release grenades with lethal precision. “Ninety per cent of our cases are from first-person view drones. We see minimal bullet injuries. This is an era of drones and a different kind of conflict,” the doctor said.

Maj Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the subterranean installation for treating wounded soldiers in the eastern region.

During one day last week, a group of three military members walked with difficulty into the hospital. The most lightly injured, twenty-eight-year-old one soldier, reported an first-person view drone explosion had torn a minor wound in his leg. “War is terrible. My comrade next to me, a fellow soldier, was killed,” he stated. “He fell down. Subsequently the enemy forces dropped a another grenade on him.” He added: “All structures in the settlement is destroyed. We see drones everywhere and bodies. Ours and the enemy's.”

Dvorskyi said his unit spent over a month in a wooded zone close to the city, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their position was by walking. Necessary provisions arrived by quadcopter: rations and drinking water. A week after he was injured, he traveled five kilometers (roughly three miles), requiring several hours, to where an military transport was able to evacuate him. At the clinic, a medical staff checked his physical condition. Following care, a nurse gave him new non-military attire: a shirt and a set of pale denim trousers.

The soldier, twenty-eight, stated a first-person view aerial device ripped a minor injury in his lower limb.

A different casualty, thirty-eight-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had resulted in concussion. “My position was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I couldn’t feel any feeling or hear anything,” he said. “I believe I was lucky to survive. My cousin has been killed. There are continuous explosions.” A construction worker working in Lithuania, he noted he had come back to his homeland and enlisted to fight shortly before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

Another military member, Taras Mykolaichuk, had been struck in the back. He expressed pain as medical staff laid him on a bed, took off a bloody bandage and treated his two-day-old injury from fragments. Covered in a foil blanket, he used a mobile phone to ring his family member. “A fragment of mortar hit me. It was a ricochet. I’m OK,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. That will take a few months. Subsequently, to return to my military group. Someone must protect our country,” he said.

Medical staff care for the wounded soldier, who was hit in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, enemy forces has repeatedly attacked medical centers, clinics, obstetric units and ambulances. Per international monitors, 261 medical personnel have been killed in nearly 2,000 attacks. This subterranean hospital is constructed from four steel bunkers, with wooden supports, earth and granular material placed above reaching ground level. It can withstand impacts from 152mm artillery shells and even three eight-kilogram TNT charges dropped by aerial means.

A major steel and mining company, which funded the building, intends to build twenty facilities in all. The head of Ukraine’s national security council and former military leader, Rustem Umerov, said they would be “critically important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the frontline.” The organization referred to the project as the “largest-scale and challenging” it had undertaken after Russia’s invasion.

One of the facility's operating theatres.

Holovashchenko, said certain wounded soldiers had to endure delays hours or even multiple days before they could be evacuated because of the danger of aerial attacks. “Our facility received a pair of severely injured patients who arrived at 3am. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His bleeding control device had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with traumatic surgeries? “I’ve been healthcare for 20 years. One must concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported Mykolaichuk through the passage and into an ambulance. The transport was parked beneath a shrub. The patient and the two other military members were taken to the city of Dnipro for further treatment. The underground medical team paused for rest. The facility's orange feline, the mascot, padded toward the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates open 24 hours a day,” Holovashchenko said. “It doesn’t stop.”